put into a thousand pleasing
Passions and Sentiments, instead of the Pangs of Anger, Envy,
Detraction, and Malice.

The worst Evil I ever observed this Man's Falsehood occasion,
has been that he turned Detraction into Flattery. He is well
skilled in the Manners of the World, and by over-looking what
Men really are, he grounds his Artifices upon what they have a
Mind to be. Upon this Foundation, if two distant Friends are
brought together, and the Cement seems to be weak, he never
rests till he finds new Appearances to take off all Remains of
Ill-will, and that by new Misunderstandings they are thoroughly
reconciled.

To the SPECTATOR.

_Devonshire, Nov._ 14, 1711.

SIR,

There arrived in this Neighbourhood two Days ago one of your gay
Gentlemen of the Town, who being attended at his Entry with a Servant
of his own, besides a Countryman he had taken up for a Guide, excited
the Curiosity of the Village to learn whence and what he might be. The
Countryman (to whom they applied as most easy of Access) knew little
more than that the Gentleman came from _London_ to travel and see
Fashions, and was, as he heard say, a Free-thinker: What Religion that
might be, he could not tell; and for his own Part, if they had not
told him the Man was a Free-thinker, he should have guessed, by his
way of talking, he was little better than a Heathen; excepting only
that he had been a good Gentleman to him, and made him drunk twice in
one Day, over and above what they had bargained for.

I do not look upon the Simplicity of this, and several odd Inquiries
with which I shall not trouble you to be wondered at, much less can I
think that our Youths of fine Wit, and enlarged Understandings, have
any Reason to laugh. There is no Necessity that every Squire in _Great
Britain_ should know what the Word Free-thinker stands for; but it
were much to be wished, that they who value themselves upon that
conceited Title were a little better instructed in what it ought to
stand for; and that they would not perswade themselves a Man is really
and truly a Free-thinker in any tolerable Sense, meerly by virtue of
his being an Atheist, or an Infidel of any other Distinction. It may
be doubted, with good Reason, whether there ever was in Nature a more
abject, slavish, and bigotted Generation than the Tribe of _Beaux
Esprits_, at present so prevailing in this Island. Their Pretension to
be Free-t